Setting Up a PC for Azure Cortana Intelligence Suite Development

Some development aspects of the Cortana Intelligence Suite can occur in the Azure Portal. There are also some additional client tools which are helpful, or potentially required, to fully create solutions. This is a quick checklist of tools you probably want to install on a development machine for purposes of working on the analytics, BI, and/or data warehousing elements of Azure.

1. SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

The latest version of SSMS is recommended for compatibility with Azure services, as well as backwards compatible with all SQL Server versions back to 2008.

2. Visual Studio 2015

The latest 2015 version of Visual Studio is recommended for full functionality for the newest components. If you choose to do a customized VS installation, be sure to select the option to install Microsoft Web Developer Tools. (If you don’t, when you try to install the Azure SDK later it won’t install properly because prerequisites are missing. Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there.)

If you don’t have a license available, look into using the VS Community edition.

Note: in addition to “Visual Studio 2015,” there’s also a “Visual Studio 15 Preview.” The 15 Preview is *not* the same thing as Visual Studio 2015, even though 15 is in its name. So, just watch out for that in terms of naming.

3. SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) for Visual Studio 2015

Here’s is where you gain the ability to create BI projects: SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). These SQL Server BI projects aren’t considered part of Cortana Intelligence Suite, but if you’re creating an analytics, BI, and/or data warehousing solution you may need at least one of types of BI projects as part of the overall solution.

With the latest version of SSDT for VS 2015, you’ll also be able to interact with all versions of SQL Server, as well as Azure SQL Database and Azure SQL Data Warehouse.

Example of what an Azure SQL Data Warehouse cloud resource looks like from within Visual Studio (SSDT):

4. Azure SDK

The Azure SDK sets up lots of libraries; the main features we are looking for from the Azure SDK right away are (a) the ability to use the Cloud Explorer within Visual Studio, and (b) the ability to create ARM template projects for automated deployment purposes. In addition to the Server Explorer we get from Visual Studio, the Cloud Explorer from the SDK gives us another way to interact with our resources in Azure.

Example of what the Cloud Explorer pane looks like in Visual Studio (by Resource Group, and by Resource Type):

Example of what you’ll see related to Azure Resource Groups after the Azure SDK is installed:

Example of various QuickStart project types available (none of these are directly related to Cortana Intelligence Suite, but might factor into your overall solution):

5. Relevant Visual Studio Extensions

These are important extensions for working with Cortana Intelligence Suite at this time:-Microsoft Azure Data Lake Tools for Visual Studio 2015 <–Automatically installed as part of the Azure SDK-Microsoft Azure HDInsight Tools for Visual Studio 2015 <–Automatically installed as part of the Azure SDK-Microsoft Azure Data Factory Tools for Visual Studio 2015

At the time of this writing (June 2016), Azure Data Factory Tools are not automatically installed with the Azure SDK. That will probably change at some point I would guess.

Example of the Cortana Intelligence Suite projects you’ll see after the Azure extensions are installed (a U-SQL project is associated with the Azure Data Lake Analytics service):

6. Microsoft Azure Storage Explorer and/or AzCopy

I really like the new standalone Azure Storage Explorer for uploading and downloading files to Azure Storage. AzCopy is another alternative – AzCopy is a command line utility instead of a graphical UI, so it’s better suited for automation and scripting purposes.